


Flowers of Carnage

by Lhugy_for_short



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Ardyn does not, Established Relationship, Love doesn't always need trust, Lovers AND enemies, M/M, Musings and interactions through the years, Verstael ages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lhugy_for_short/pseuds/Lhugy_for_short
Summary: Verstael Besithia is not a man with much room in his heart for love. In fact, he might better describe what he's felt for Ardyn Izunia all these years more of...an obsession. But their work together has come to produce great and terrible things, and for that, he could not have asked for a better partner.
Relationships: Verstael Besithia/Ardyn Izunia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: FFXV Secret Santa 2020





	Flowers of Carnage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slingbees](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slingbees/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, Bee!!! I can't tell you how excited I was to get you as my giftee for the FFXV Secret Santa! I've had so much fun working on this, and I hope it can add a little love to your holiday season <3 
> 
> BTW, the title comes from my favorite enka song, "Flowers of Carnage" (修羅の花 or _shuri no hana_ ) by Kaji Meiko. It seemed like a fitting way to describe these two idiots (especially Ardyn, the psycho) as well as their pet MTs.

Cause for celebration was a rare thing indeed within the somber walls of Zegnautus Keep. 

The Niflheim Empire was, without a doubt, on the cusp of global domination. Most recently, the realm of Tenebrae had at last bent the knee, and with victory all the power and wealth of the Oracle line had fallen to Emperor Aldercapt. The borders of the Lucian kingdom shrank more with each passing day, defeat after defeat pushing the young King Regis further back behind his crumbling Walls. 

And yet, while each victory represented a step closer to realizing the Emperor's vision, the war had summoned a dark sky over Gralea. Night seemed endless, the snow and shadows that drifted down from the mountains clung like stains to the cold concrete streets. The very life of the city had been all but suffocated by the machines of a war fought a continent away. 

It was above this drab, dreary city, high up in the secretive laboratories of Zegnautus, that an unlikely celebration of sorts was about to begin. 

Verstael set two empty glasses on the edge of the rooftop railing with more force than was necessary. He was not usually a crude man, but he  _ did  _ tend to lean towards melodramatic at the best of times. And this was hardly one of his best nights. 

"I thought I might find you up here," he said gruffly, knowing full well he was the one who had asked Ardyn to come. Dark auburn hair caught the cool moonlight as the taller man turned to greet him. 

"Ah. If I'd known you were looking for me, I would've done a better job of hiding. I know how much you enjoy the chase." 

"Hmph." Verstael didn't bother dignifying that with a response of his own. He drew a heavy bottle out of the folds of his robes - the only practical use for Niflheim's otherwise stifling choice of formal military garb - and set to work on the cork stopped in its mouth. 

For a moment, Ardyn watched him in playful silence. Then, with an unreadable smile, "What's the occasion, my good High Commander? Don't tell me I've forgotten something important. Is it our anniversary? Three years since you pulled me out of that godsforsaken cave, or something?" 

"It's been nine years and eleven months, if you must know, though I hardly expect someone of your...history to keep track of time. No," he said, and straightened his back as the cork released with an echoing  _ pop _ . "I'm here to congratulate you on your new title.  _ Chancellor  _ Izunia." 

There it was again. That distaste in his voice he couldn't hide even if he wanted to. Why should he bother to hold his tongue here, after all? Just the two of them, far from the prying ears of the Emperor's inner circle. Far from the danger he risked with his dissent. "I must admit the appointment came as a surprise to me." 

“Is that so?" was all Ardyn said for the moment. He allowed Verstael to pour him a glass of the wine - deep, rich crimson, matching both his hair and the distant lights flickering around the sullen city below. The glass reflected every glint, every flash, but the light was absorbed into the shadows of Ardyn's eyes fixed on him. 

Any other man might have cowered under that gaze. But Verstael merely scowled into it. "Were you planning on telling me about this ill-advised venture into politics, or were you hoping I wouldn't find out?" 

Ardyn tipped his wine glass forward, clinking the edge against the fresh one Verstael had just poured. A long first sip prefaced his reply. "Mm. Give me some credit, Vee. I was going to wait and see how long it took you to figure things out on your own, of course. Why spoil the fun?" 

"Hah!" An entirely humorless laugh. Without taking his eyes from his companion (Verstael had long since learned the danger in doing so), he strode across the open rooftop the few paces to the edge of the outer wall. He learned backwards, coming to rest against the same spot Ardyn had occupied moments before. It was, he noticed perceptively, still warm. "Joking aside, Ardyn, I hope you understand how this...complicates things. For both you and myself. 'Chancellor' is not a title given easily, and Iedolas will expect your undivided loyalty." 

Yellow eyes gleamed above a widening grin. "Jealous, are we, Vee?" 

"Hardly!" Verstael resisted the temptation to hurl his glass of wine directly into Ardyn's face. That would be a tragedy for the wasted wine. "But I  _ am  _ concerned about the attention your new position will bring to our work in the lab. If the Emperor so much as catches wind of the magiteck core project--" 

"Dear, dear Verstael. I really do wish you wouldn't underestimate me so." His tone was light, as dismissively coy as it ever was these days, and for once Verstael found himself itching for the raw emotion of the hollow man he'd first found in those caves. "If you'll allow me to explain, I think you'll come to see how my recent promotion benefits us both." 

Ardyn's warmth joined him against the railing. Shoulder to shoulder, like so many otherwise cold nights hard at work together in the labs, and the suggestive brush of knuckles against his forearm told Verstael the conspiratoriality of the moment wasn't unintended. "Aldercapt, as you might suspect, believes that by appointing me to his council he might control me.  _ Buy my loyalty _ , as if it were a thing for sale." 

"He intends to use you like a puppet." 

"I know. Who here doesn't?" At this, Ardyn brought his wine to his lips, none-too subtly casting his gaze sidelong at Verstael. Something was there, a threat or a challenge - or a little of both, which probably explained the bolt of interest striking Verstael square in the chest. At any rate, he hadn't had enough alcohol to start blaming his physical reactions on anything other than the man beside him. 

"Yet despite what our dear, demented Iedolas hopes," Ardyn continued smoothly, not bothering to comment on Verstael's sudden silence. "Neither my powers nor my plans are so easily manipulated. I haven't forgotten my revenge, Verstael. Nor our deal." 

"Then...you intend to use the Emperor's trust to blind him to your true aims? Bold." 

"I learned from a master of deception," he hummed, rocking his weight slightly against Verstael's frame. An odd choice of compliment, but a compliment all the same. 

"I still fail to see how this helps  _ me.  _ I'm half tempted to bar you from the lab on account of the security risk. How do I know the...creations won't fall into the wrong hands?" 

" _ Vee _ ." The dull light of the clouded moon was blocked from view as Ardyn stepped away from the railing and into Verstael's line of sight instead. Closer now, so that the faint scent of wine drifting from his lips was just as distracting as the mouth they were attached to. "Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?" 

He very nearly laughed. Nearly, because any sounds he might have otherwise made were captured up in the mouth that suddenly pressed against his own. Hard, demanding, unyielding. A mouth that could belong to no one but Ardyn Izunia, and one which, at least in Verstael's experience, had no equal. They both let their empty wine glasses crash to the floor, broken shards scattering across the roof like promises they both knew couldn't be kept. But it didn't matter. It hadn't mattered for so long now, for all the months and years that Verstael counted obsessively, and which Ardyn brushed aside as a mere blip in the timeline of the damned. 

There, high above the darkened city of Gralea, an unlikely celebration unfolded. The city's doom was sealed in the grunts and curses passed between lips that waged for dominance. In the hands that grappled for power, for leverage, for  _ more time _ . 

For both war and inevitable mortality threatened the seconds they had left.

* * *

The battle raging below was truly a sight to behold. Verstael watched his army of machines - those soulless puppets animated by demonic cores - sweep across the dust-choked land like a plague of locusts. They were uncoordinated, yes, and still flailed their limbs with all the grace of a newborn anak. But their drive was unparalleled. Their focus, singular. As they charged the black-cloaked ranks of the enemy Glaives, nothing could stop their assault. 

"Magnificent," he muttered over the sounds of screaming and the whir of the airship engines overhead. "Absolutely magnificent." 

"Careful. Your pride is showing." A voice joined him at the open cargo hatch to observe the scene. Verstael didn't need to turn to know it belonged to Chancellor Izunia. 

"Hah. Let it show. Why shouldn't I be proud? Of this, my greatest creation: the most devastating army this world has ever known!" 

" _ Yours _ ? Have you already forgotten about  _ my _ humble contributions?" Ardyn strode closer to the unguarded edge of the hatch, his boot coming to rest mere inches from a fatal plummet to the battlefield. Wind whipped at his robes, his auburn hair, yet his face showed nothing but amusement as he regarded the sea of death below. "I believe we both had a hand in turning these tides today." 

Verstael dismissed him with a wave of his gloved hand. "Of course, of course. As if you'd ever let me forget. But...they are beautiful, aren't they?" 

"Our little monsters." The Chancellor flashed him a grin. 

"Hmph." Behind the perpetual scowl Verstael had taken to wearing over the years, he couldn't resist a private, if fleeting, smile at the thought. True, he had been the brains behind most of the technology that had gone into producing these infinitely disposable soldiers, but it was undeniably Ardyn's touch that had brought the project to life in the end. Literally. The first time he'd watched the shadows seep from yellow eyes and the transfer of animate energy pour from one body to the next…. It had been not unlike witnessing the Breath of Creation itself. 

Hah! There was a dark folly. Comparing the demon Adagium to the very gods who had betrayed him. He was nothing like those selfish, spoiled Astrals. He knew suffering. He knew pain. He knew of revenge, and therefore spoke more to a soul like Verstael's than any deity of Light ever could. 

As Ardyn fearlessly perched himself on the very corner of the open hatch, Verstael couldn't resist a chuckle. Then a laugh. By the time he'd caught the Chancellor's attention, he was grinning like a whelp in a candy store. 

"...Is something funny?" he asked, tilting his face to regard Verstael over his shoulder. 

"You," he answered. Then, clarifying: "You could lay waste to that entire basin with your powers. Yet you stand there, watching them fight as if they weren't all insects to be crushed beneath your boot. I'll never understand why you hold back so." 

"I wouldn't expect you to." 

Ardyn offered his hand and Verstael, without hesitation, strode forward to grasp it. Together they soared above the battlefield, watching in silence as their creations blossomed outward like flowers of carnage. 

* * *

So. It had come to this. 

The Empire was fallen, that much any idiot could plainly see. Those few who still clung to the tattered banners of their ideals were wasted souls. There was no saving Gralea from the hellish hordes demons, not now, not ever. Even proud, foolish Iedolas had succumbed to shadows in the end. 

Weak, imperfect specimens all.

But not Verstael. He'd survived because he alone in that darkened city of sin had known the truth. He knew the origin of the Scourge, and he knew that it, not Lucian magic, was responsible for rotting the proverbial apple from the inside out. The very same strands of unearthly DNA he had studied for decades, that he had transfused into the blood of his puppet-like soldiers, had eventually brought Niflheim to its ruin. 

To his twisted sense of humor, the irony was cause for raucous laughter. Where others might weep for their homeland's destruction, he could only see in this tragedy a new discovery. New data to help him on his never ending path for power, for understanding. For they were one and the same; by seeing the truths of the world, one could bend it to one's will. 

_ That _ was what had brought him here, now at the end of things, to the frozen peaks of Gralea's mountains. To the laboratory he'd run in secret all these long years. Here, where he and Ardyn had perfected their work. Here, where they had built an army from cells and tissue and bone. Here, where he'd planted the seeds of an even greater idea - what he believed would be his life's greatest achievement. 

Izunia had been his inspiration, however unwittingly. He, the body of a mere man in possession of powers to rival the gods themselves. Gods who could be beaten. Gods who were fallible, tameable. If they were so fatally flawed, so  _ human _ in their design, then what, he'd asked himself countless times, was stopping him from creating gods of his own? After all, he'd managed to bring life to the clones, had he not? A little more power, the right vessel…. Yes. Yes, he'd never been more certain of the possibility in his entire career. 

Yet, time and again his secret experiments had failed. After twenty-five years, he'd nearly given up hope of ever succeeding at all. But now, with the fall of Niflheim, he finally had the missing piece of the puzzle. All his failures had amounted to  _ weak hosts _ . It wasn't just any mortal off the streets or out of a test tube that could contain all the rage and violence and hate that fueled the Astrals. A very special human would be needed. 

Who better, then, but himself to offer to Project Immortalis? 

"I take it you mean to go through with your scheme?" The voice caught Verstael off guard. He'd believed himself alone in the lab, but now he turned to find none other than Ardyn Izunia, Chancellor of nowhere, dressed as ever in his favorite cloak of black. He tipped his hat with a smile. 

In return, Verstael curled his lips. "You…. I thought you weren't coming back." 

"Consider this a special visit, off the records. I wanted to see my favorite mad genius, after all." 

It pained Verstael, he hated to admit, to see Ardyn now, like this. He, with the same face, same eyes, not having aged a day since he'd been pulled from his imprisonment. What must he think to look upon his old partner, now grey and twisted with time? "Why have you come? To mock me? To stop me from one last chance at greatness?" 

"Not at all." When Ardyn swept forward, there was no malice there. Only - and Verstael was speechless to realize it - a hint of sadness tugging at the corners of his smile. "I wanted to say goodbye. If you truly mean to finish this, then I fear we may not meet again in this life." 

"And…if I were to give this all up? What then?" 

A chuckle, deep and humorless. "Come now, Vee. We both know you well enough to know you won't do that." 

Ardyn had nearly reached him now. A hand stretched out, came to rest on his shoulder. Squeezed gently in a hauntingly familiar touch, as if to fill the gap of the words still unspoken between them. 

Thirty years. In all that time, Verstael had never trusted this ancient, dangerous man. He'd never trusted him, and yet neither had he been able to resist his pull. Guarding himself always even as he'd let Ardyn closer, closer…. 

And now, here at the end and the beginning of it all, Ardyn had returned to him like an answer he hadn't realized he'd been praying for. 

"Thank you…my old friend." 

"Come. Let's not squander this moment with tied tongues. We're alone here. We can speak freely." 

"At last," Verstael laughed, then fell into a thoughtful frown. "…Might I ask you something? Grant an old man one last request." 

"If I can," Ardyn smiled at him. 

"I see now that all these years, everything you taught me, was all part of your plan. I don't begrudge you that, of course. I would've done the same." 

"What's your question, Vee?" 

"Why did you choose me? I'm not talking about the laboratories or the research. I mean…me. What is it you saw in me?" 

Yellow eyes twinkled in the icy blue light. Slowly, as if cautious not to break the silence in the air, Ardyn moved his hand from Verstael's shoulder up to his face. Cupped his cheek with a warmth that could belong to no one else, and smiled the way he had that night on the rooftop, what felt like a lifetime ago. 

"Because," he said simply. "You saw  _ me,  _ first."

In that moment, it was all clear. Verstael's past, his present, his future. The tribulations that had carried him through life, never once looking back, ever forward to the next stage, the next evolution. Only one constant remained through it all. From the first time he'd heard the name 'Adagium' spoken in hushed tones, to the glorious moment he'd found him at last on Angelguard, pale limbs and tortured face hanging with centuries of suffering, Ardyn had been there. He'd been a companion and a partner, a friend and much, much more. No, Verstael didn't trust him, but…

But he did  _ love  _ him. Both as a man,  _ and _ as the monster the gods had made of him. 

"Thank you," Ardyn was saying, as hot tears stung at the backs of Verstael's eyes. "I will allow you this last venture into madness, my friend. And know that, one day, we will be together again in the Beyond." 

"Yes. Yes, I will await you there." He rolled his shoulders, an attempt to shake off the heaviness that hung in his heart. "However long it takes." 

Whatever Ardyn was about to say was cut off by the clanking of a cargo door in the distance. The two fell quiet, listening closely to the echoing of metallic footsteps, of shouting and a thud against the wall several floors below. 

An intruder? More MTs gone rogue? Verstael met Ardyn's gaze, surprised to find his expression dancing with malicious glee. 

"Ahh, splendid! It seems your timing couldn't have been more perfect, Vee." 

"What? Why?"

"After so long, one of our beautiful little monsters has returned to help you finish this game. What do you say we put on a spectacular welcome party for him?" 

Turning, Verstael gazed up at the pulsing, churning machine that would be the catalyst. Death, rebirth.  _ Divinity _ . Yes. With Ardyn at his side, he would take this fortuitous chance for the gift it was. The time was nigh. 

"One last fight," he grinned. 

"Our final glory," agreed Ardyn. 

"Thank you as always. My friend." 


End file.
